Amazon, Postal Service Team Up for Holiday Shopping Season With Sunday Delivery

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Online-retailer giant Amazon is gearing up for the holiday shopping season with an exclusive agreement with the U.S. Postal Service by offering Sunday delivery.

Online-retailer giant Amazon is gearing up for the holiday shopping season with an exclusive agreement with the U.S. Postal Service.

Starting Monday, the postal service will deliver packages on Sunday to shoppers' doors in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas at no extra cost. Next year, Amazon plans to expand the year-round Sunday delivery service to Dallas, New Orleans, Phoenix and other cities, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Members of the company's Prime service will be able to order products on Friday and get them by Sunday for free, but the service also applies to those non-Prime members, who can get free five to eight day shipping on orders more than $35, according to USA Today.

"The three big pieces of growth for us are selection, lower prices and speed," David Clark, vice president of worldwide operations and customer service told USA Today. "Adding an additional day is all about delivery speed. An Amazon customer can order a backpack and a Kindle for their child and be packing it up on Sunday for school on Monday."

The new partnership may also be a boon for the struggling U.S. Postal Service which has growing financial losses and has been pushing to limit mail delivery to five days a week. Currently, the two other major delivery parcel services – United Parcel Service and FedEx – do not deliver on Sunday.

The postal service plans to use its flexible scheduling of its employees to pull off Sunday delivery for Amazon, Sue Brennan, a spokesman for the postal service told the Los Angeles Times. However, there are no plans to add employees, she said.

Amazon has been spending billions of dollars building new warehouses around the world to expedite delivery of its products, USA Today reported.